Former ESPN exec reconsidering her love of football

WASHINGTON – The former vice president of ESPN says the damage to football players’ brains due to concussions is making her question her love for the sport.

Roxanne Jones has watched football for decades as a fan and as a journalist.

Like many fans, she says she loved the hits players took.

But she says she every really understood the damage they caused.

Now with more than 20 years of medical evidence about concussions, coupled with scandals involving players’ off-field violence and the NFL’s lack of a response, her opinion of the game is changing.

“As more scientific research has come to fore, my hope would be that we could still love the game and we can all admit that it is very dangerous and then immediately start looking for ways to make it safer for the guys playing on the field now and for the whole lineup of young boys who are playing the game now and imitating the NFL,” she tells WTOP.

She says the NFL, the league and union have failed the players by lying about the damage.

She’s disappointed that the NFL “has been more concerned about marketing, selling the game, making money off the game.”

Listen to WTOP’s interview with Jones above and on the right and read her CNN op-ed piece.

What do you think? Are you a football fan who has started to feel differently about the sport in light of new revelations about head injuries? Have recent revelations about how the NFL has handled this information changed your opinion about the league? Call WTOP’s Talkback line at 877-222-1035, post a comment on this story, leave a comment on WTOP’s Facebook Page or use #WTOP on Twitter.